Thursday, January 29, 2015

Why is this story called “Contents of the Dead Man’s Pocket”?

Tom imagines what would be said about him if he plunged to his death. It would be natural to look for identification, and anyone who did so would simply find the interoffice memo, and no other defining possessions or indication of who Tom was.


The title is ironic, because Tom survives, but his experience teaches him something incredibly valuable: to not be a man defined by his work. The memo had illegible scribblings on it. It was significant of nothing. If Tom were to leave his apartment now and get struck by a bus, he would be the man going to meet his wife at the movies, not the man stuck at home working during a weekend. The contents of his pocket(and symbolically, his life) would be much different.

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